Address by the MEC for health and Social Development Mr Seaparo Sekoati on the occasion of Pharmacy Week Celebration

15 September 2006

Venue: Bismark Clinic, Maruleng Municipality Mopani District

Programme Director
Kgosi Makhushane
Executive Mayor of Mopani
Clr Mokgobi
Mayor of Maruleng
Clr Mafogo
Councillors
Traditional Leaders
Members of the Hospital Boards and Clinic Committees Distinguished Guest
Ladies and Gentlemen

Our vision as a department is “A health promoting and developmental service to the people of Limpopo”. This vision includes affordable and accessible medicine by ordinary citizens in this province.

The dispensary of medicine must also be inline with the Batho Pele principle and the core values and standards we have set ourselves. Nationally we have made a breakthrough last year September in which a ruling by the Constitutional Court gave government the right to set a health policy and adopt measures aimed at making medicines affordable and more accessible to ordinary South Africa.

This Tuesday The Star newspaper revealed that mortuaries have identified more and more deaths are caused by overdose. When people are taken to mortuaries they come with report that people die of both legal and illegal drugs.

We need to appeal to people that overdose can kill you and can only avoid this by following doctors prescription. People might not be aware that there are many people who die as result of overdosing.

Some die while asleep and we say they have died a peaceful death when they actually committed suicide. We all know of people who just collapse and die and some cases are caused by overdose. So our call today is that “Know Your Medicine”.

The department is committed to ensuring that medicine is available in all hospitals and clinics. We want to make sure that delivery is timeous and that all our facilities have enough stock at all times. Like doctors and nurses, we have shortage of pharmacists. They are also leaving the province for private sector and other provinces.

We are faced with a challenge of District pharmacist having to train more pharmacist assistants. The training of nurses on dispensing medicines is also crucial. Existing Drugs and Therapeutics Committees in hospitals need support in particular from Clinical Managers.

Registration of pharmacies like Meckenburg, Thabamoopo, Thabazimbi and Musina is still not concluded and where possible we need to speed up the process. We should avoid bottlenecks such as medicine being stuck in the Depot and not dispensed to the periphery.

The unavailability of drugs including antiretroviral for the Comprehensive Plan for HIV and AIDS create a massive challenge for the department. We cannot make excuses for not delivering such services. Together we can succeed.

I thank you.

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